US bench­mark West Texas In­ter­me­di­ate was down 72 cents, or 1.51 per­cent, at US $46.92 while Brent fell 68 cents, or 1.36pc, to $49.24 by noon yes­ter­day.

“Oil prices came un­der pres­sure fol­low­ing me­dia re­ports of the Saudi oil min­is­ter’s com­ments that there was lim­ited pos­si­bil­ity of any agree­ment for ma­jor in­ter­ven­tion dur­ing the planned in­for­mal meet­ing of OPEC mem­bers next month,” said EY oil and gas an­a­lyst Sanjeev Gupta.

Saudi Ara­bia, the biggest pro­ducer in the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Pe­tro­leum Ex­port­ing Coun­tries, ad­vo­cated an out­put freeze ear­lier this year but no deal was reached af­ter Iran, which is just emerg­ing from sanc­tions, re­fused to join.

“Af­ter a week of yoyo-ing on OPEC chat­ter and geopo­lit­i­cal con­cerns and with the jury still out on an OPEC pro­duc­tion freeze, the near-term fun­da­men­tals along with sup­ply con­cerns, will dom­i­nate price ac­tion on oil this week,” said Stephen Innes, a se­nior trader at OANDA. –